


Quick and Clean

by PuckishElf



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Maglor being introspective, PTSD, Sleep Paralysis, and I flat out established he's every bit as much a murder son as the rest of them, don't let that woobie face fool you, my first Maglor drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 07:52:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17096771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuckishElf/pseuds/PuckishElf
Summary: Maglor’s thoughts on battle.





	Quick and Clean

**Author's Note:**

> My first-ever Maglor drabble; more will follow. This one's set sometime between the Third Kinslaying and the War of Wrath, in the downtime while he's raising Elros and Elrond.

His cuts are quick and clean. With his slender one-handed swords, there’s less force in each swipe, so each swipe has to be precise–and Maglor is, with both hands at once. He’s never been the type to start fights, but he is very talented at finishing them. He is not a sadist; a quick death is the best death, especially for Orcs. More than once he’s caught a glimmer of something in their eyes as what passes for their souls slip out of their bodies: something that looks too much like the same heartbroken, betrayed look he’s gotten from the Elves he’s killed. He always looks away. He is not a masochist, either.

But he is a killer, and a very skilled one at that. He is agile beyond belief; his body twists and turns through battles so much that an untrained eye might think him to be mimicking a dance. But no. There are no flourishes to his attacks, no wasted movements. Just quick, clean strikes.

That was not the case at Alqualondë. The quays were sheer panic and terror. The Noldor had invented swords but not really figured out how to use them; it basically boiled down to sticking the pointy end into anything that did not have dark hair. (Except Celegorm, although Makalaurë did almost cut off his brother’s hand in reflexive retaliation when one of Celegorm’s wild swings went too wide.) Everything was panic and terror, darkness and fire, crunching bones, falling bodies, and blood, blood blood. His throat was raw, he realized after they had gotten hold of the ships, and it took him a good ten minutes to figure out he’d been screaming the entire time.

People come up with sayings in war, and one of them that Maglor has heard is that killing never gets easier. That’s a lie. It does. With every fight, he learns a little about the bodies of bipedal creatures. Their weaknesses–the softest parts of the body; the parts that bleed out the fastest; the exact path a blade must take for a killing strike at any one of twenty entry points. Their strengths (the wild way an Orc can switch from dashing on two legs to loping on four) and how to turn them to advantage (timing just the right moment to strike as they snap up from four legs to two, the exact moment they leave their necks and bellies exposed).

What doesn’t get any easier is trying to sleep when it’s done. The harder he fights, the better he sleeps. Because if he doesn’t exhaust himself so completely that he sinks below the paths of dream entirely, he will wake up screaming in the night. Worse still are the nights he wakes up with no sound at all, staring at a wall and shaking, staring at what only he can see: the eyes of the Teleri, of Dior the Beautiful, of Elwing his daughter, pinning him to his bed like a butterfly on one of Caranthir’s boards. When the eyes finally set his body free it turns itself inside out, and he retches until there’s not even bile left and keeps retching. The worst nights still are those when after his body has emptied itself and he stops convulsing, he can’t even weep. No; weeping is not weakness, but relief. And some nights even that is taken from him, leaving him cold and staring with an empty gaze, and he finds himself wondering if this is what his corpse will look like to whomever ends up burying him.

He only hopes it will not be Maedhros.


End file.
